Chapter 1

I entered this world with a single purpose: to save Mark Johnson. The System, the entity that governs these assignments, described him as a 'high-value target with self-destructive tendencies.' My job was to be his fixer, his anchor, the stable force that would pull him back from the brink.

For eight years, I thought I had succeeded.

I met him when he was at his lowest, a brilliant but reckless executive whose life was a chaotic mess of bad deals, family trauma, and a looming addiction. I was the steady hand on his shoulder, the calm voice that guided him through corporate minefields and personal demons.

I was there the night he crashed his car, pulling him from the wreckage before it burst into flames. My arm was broken, but he was safe. That night, clinging to me in the sterile hospital room, he had sworn he couldn't live without me. I believed him. I made his life my project.

I helped him rebuild his career, piece by piece. I managed his finances, his social life, his fragile emotional state. I built a fortress of stability around him, a quiet, peaceful life he had never known.

We got married. Our life became the template of success, the envy of our friends. The troubled man was gone, replaced by a confident, successful husband. My mission, it seemed, was complete.

But peace, I learned, is a language Mark Johnson never truly wanted to master. The stability he once craved now felt like a cage.

The quiet of our evenings together began to feel heavy, filled with his unspoken restlessness.

Last month, during one of our silent dinners, he broke the silence.

"Life is... a little too quiet now, isn't it, Sarah?"

He smiled as he said it, a gentle, almost apologetic smile, as if commenting on the weather. But his eyes held a flicker of something else, a yearning for the storms I had worked so hard to calm.

He reached across the table, his hand covering mine. "I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just... different."

His touch was meant to be reassuring, but it felt cold. A deep, aching sourness spread through my chest, a feeling I hadn't experienced in years. It was the taste of failure.

I pulled my hand back slowly. "I'm a little tired. I think I'll turn in early."

I walked away from the dinner table without another word, leaving him sitting in the perfectly curated silence of the life I had built for him.

In the bathroom, I turned on the faucet, the sound of rushing water covering the single, silent tear that escaped and traced a path down my cheek. I had fixed him, and in doing so, I had made myself obsolete.